Matthew C Klein, Columnist

Can Apple and Amazon Make TV Better?

The business of distributing content, whether over traditional cable or the Internet, is extremely competitive. The problem for consumers is the bargaining power of the networks that produce the content.

January 22, 2014 at 10:04 PM UTC

By Matthew C Klein

Matthew C. Klein writes for Bloomberg View about the economy and financial markets. He previously wrote for the Economist magazine and its economics blog, Free Exchange. Before that, Klein was a research associate at the Council on Foreign Relations, where he spent more than two years studying the history of the Federal Reserve and the intellectual history of monetary economics for an upcoming book by Sebastian Mallaby. He also worked at Bridgewater Associates, where he studied the economies of Central and Eastern Europe and advised institutional investors on asset-liability management. Klein has a bachelor's degree in history from Yale University. Originally from Chicago, he lives in New York.

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It's hardly a surprise that many people are excited by the prospect of Apple Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. selling television programming over the Web. But these tech aces may not do much better than the hated cable companies.

In the popular mind, the folks who make and sell the pipes that let us watch TV and surf the Internet are evil monopolists that gouge consumers. Service would improve if only there were more competition.